Where Liberalism Is Alive and Well!

Reverse Robin Hoodism – Take From The Poor, Give To The Rich!

It is astounding how blatantly the Republican party is giving massive amounts of money to the richest people in our country while asking for “sacrifice” from the poorest and most needy. As I said in a previous post, at some point the separation between the rich and poor will be so great, there won’t be anyone to buy their freakin products or services. A basic macro-economics class would tell them that you need demand in the supply/demand equation. Unfortunately if we were to ever get to the point where they learn that lesson, it will be too late. The stupidity that resides in the Republican party…and there is way too much in the Democratic party too…makes America look like a bunch of idiots to the rest of the world. We have to change that in 2012, bigtime.

It isn’t just our national politicians who are raping the poor, women, children, students and the disabled. As we all have been watching, Republican governors are taking it to extremes. Scott Walker of course is the most visible in the national media, but Rick Snyder in my state of Michigan, John Kasich in Ohio, Jan Brewer in Arizona, Rick Scott in Florida, Chris Christie in New Jersey, Rick Perry in Texas…am I missing someone. Think Progress has some details for us…

Arizona

…Governor Jan Brewer is proposing to kick some 280,000 Arizonans, mostly childless adults, off the state’s Medicaid rolls. Brewer claims such a move is the only way to get the state’s fiscal house in order, as it would save $541.5 million in general funding spending…

…Instead of balancing out these draconian cuts with additional revenue increases or simply not making the cuts in the first place, Brewer instead signed $538 million in corporate tax cuts into law two weeks ago.

…Such deep cuts in essential programs and services are necessary to offset Scott’s proposal to cut corporate and property taxes by at least $4 billion.

Michigan

…As Matt Yglesias has noted, Snyder has an innovative definition of “shared sacrifice.” His plan calls for “$1.2 billion in cuts to schools, universities, local governments and other areas while asking public employees for $180 million in concessions.” In addition, it would raise taxes on individuals by ending many deductions and taxing pensions — all in order to pay for $1.8 billion in tax cuts for businesses. Since the state’s entire budget shortfall this year is only about $1.7 billion, all or most of the cuts to services and programs important to the poor and middle class (many of whom will also see their taxes increases) could be avoided if the governor was willing to forego corporate tax breaks.

…Christie is also being sued by Federal Transit Administration for keeping $271 million in federal funding for a tunnel under the Hudson — money he insists on keeping even after having personally canceled the project.

Gov. John Kasich demonstrated an early propensity for making future-losing choices when he made good on a campaign promise to kill Ohio’s federally-funded high-speed rail project — a move that will cost Ohio $400 million in badly-needed infrastructure investment, cost thousands of jobs, and derail millions of dollars in related private sector investments in economic development. Kasich, along with numerous other Ohio Republicans, has signed the Americans for Tax Reform pledge that rules out any tax increases to help the state make ends meet. Even though the state has an $8 billion budget shortfall, Kasich has gone even further in proposing a variety of tax cuts that would benefit corporations and the wealthy.

…Perry also refuses to use any of the $9.4 billion in the state’s rainy day fund (some of which, ironically, comes from stimulus funds intended to help states stave off draconian cuts that Perry instead squirreled away) and is instead contemplating deep cuts to child services programs and education, among other things. Perry even floated a plan to drop Medicaid entirely. Perry’s proposed education cuts are so deep that they prompted an unlikely source to take to the pages of the Houston Chronicle to write in opposition to them — none other than former First Lady Laura Bush.

…Walker is also late in offering his budget, but it is believed that in spite of the supposed “crisis” and being “broke,” as Walker himself has said, his budget plans will include “a LOT more tax breaks” for the rich and corporations that will have to be balanced on the backs of workers or with painful cuts to state services and the state’s Medicaid programs, BadgerCare.

Do you see the underlying theme here? Give tax breaks to corporations and wealthy people, cut programs from those most in need. They aren’t even trying to hide it, I guess they are still riding the wave of “President Reagan’s Supply Side Cavalcade of Fun and Trickling“. They firmly believe in it, although every single measure of success of supply side economics shows that is was a monumental failure. But when someone has been brainwashed since birth to believe in it, reversing the cult of Reagan is no easy task. When President Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, pans your budget plan, you know you are way out in right field.

6 thoughts on “Reverse Robin Hoodism – Take From The Poor, Give To The Rich!”

Most of the poor education performance is from government run, union staffed schools with limited parental involvement.

States do not have the money to keep encouraging people to not work and to not take personal responsibility for their lives. The entitled class, AKA Democrats, solution is always raise taxes, keep people on the welfare rolls and blame the productive members of our society for all of their shortcomings.

The fair tax would increase taxes on the productive class while capturing the underground economy. Democrats stand against the fair tax because it takes away the politicians power to control taxes.

Most schools in America are run by LOCAL governments using LOCAL taxes, with total teacher union membership nationwide at only 37.1%. Most of the Union teachers are in the highly populated states of the Northeast, Great Lakes, and West Coast. Most of “red” Republican Amerika has poor union representation. Many of these states have poor performance mainly due to lack of funding and have many “christian academies” bleeding off their mostly white, more affluent populations thus still practicing de facto segregation.

So our TROLL Atlanta Ralph LIES again alleging MOST teachers are UNION!. Kind of like Sen. Kyl saying that Planned Parenthood is mostly in the abortion business, 90% from Kyl’s mouth when the TRUTH is only 3% of their services are related to abortion and are not funded with any federal monies BY LAW.

Public schools don’t have the luxury of being selective, being able to kick out students who don’t perform like private, parochial, and charter schools can and do. Even though my students were 99.9% Mexican-American, 80% from homes below the poverty level, I was still able to get many of my students into the nation’s finest schools from USC to Notre Dame, to Harvard and Columbia. Many then went on to some of the finest graduate schools. I had very good parent relations. Teachers are still cherished/respected in Mexican-American communities. I was invited to many family functions, always had a ton of tamales given to me every Christmas.

Over half my 135 “friends” on Facebook are former students. They have been inviting me to join their pages, never the other way around. In looking at their “friends” list, notice I am the only former teacher they have included. I enjoy keeping up with their lives, seeing pictures of their growing families. I feel honored so many want to include me in their adult lives. There are so many non-monetary rewards to teaching.

Yea, I had a student introduce me at a premiere of a film I executive produced, http://www.walterswife.com and it was probably the most touching moment of my life. The theater was packed with 300 people and he talked about how I was more than a professor, I was a mentor, a friend, and on and on. He had tears and choked up…I hope he’s not reading this, oh shit. It was pretty cool, my wife was there and my step-daughter.